April 14, 2010

I recently overheard a Ted Talk that piqued my future thinking curiosity, so I decided to check it out. Kirk Citron: And Now, the Real News (embedded below) was a very brief snippet (less than 3 minutes) that presented the question: What news is really going to matter in the future?

Kirk details looking in the long run (50 to 100 years) and observes that the top news stories from the last year will not matter in the long run. There is a different news filter that one has to apply to find the news that will matter in 50 years. Any stories related to:

Science and Technology,

Natural Resources,

Expansion (particularly China), and

New Discoveries.

He gave examples that were very intriguing, like without genetically enhanced crops, Great Britain will starve to death. He noted that the discovery of water on the moon will make it easier for someone (could be NASA, could not be) to build a colony there. Kirk's point - in the long run, some news stories are more important than others.

Here is the very brief Ted Talk:

For more information on the subject - check out long news, there are some pretty interesting articles.